All of the successful companies we featured in this report talk about their investment in journalism. They also know what kinds of content people are willing to pay for and they deliver it.

Example:“The number one objective for our marketing team is to convince readers we’re worth paying for,” said Hannah Yang, Senior Vice President, Subscription Acquisition & Media Management, The New York Times. “The one thing that has never changed in my tenure is the quality of our journalism.”

Companies that are winning in the digital subscription space are obsessed with data.

Example: The Wall Street Journal assigns a propensity score to every visitor. “When someone has a high propensity score, we lock down the site,” said Jon Buckley, Director, Digital Subscriber Acquisition & Media. In order to understand what drives subscriptions, they follow 65 different signals such as visit frequency, number of articles per visit, zip code and device.

4. Make investments in the right technology (choosing the right R&D partners)

Sophisticated technology is needed to win in this space.

Example: The Day worked with LEAP, Blue Venn, Active Campaign, Second Street and Acxiom to build their infrastructure and focus on things such as merchant data, newsletters and contesting.

5. Commit to a hard paywall (readers hit the wall after 2-4 articles)

The successful companies are stingy when it comes to how many articles a visitor can read before hitting the paywall. It’s two at The Boston Globe, three at The Washington Post and four at The Seattle Times.

Example: Many of those companies have been reluctant to make any exceptions, including social media. Facebook Instant Articles now has a paywall option. About a dozen newspapers in North America and Europe are participating in an alpha test and early results are promising.